(Nothing) New
by The Polyethylene Man
Summary: The program for this evening is not new. You've seen this entertainment through and through. You've seen your birth your life and death. You might recall all of the rest. Did you have a good world when you died? Enough to base a movie on?
1. Into: Nothing

This must have been the fifth or sixth time. Rei was floating in the cavernous room's central tube, Gendo Ikari gazing at her naked form in whatever passes for pride and affection for him. She had been lost inside her thoughts, the LCL in the tube deadening sound and sensation, leading her mind to take over. She remembered the future: the war against heaven and the end of all things. She remembered the boy at the heart of it all, and the sensation of the boy's father inside her. She remembered other people's feelings, other people's thoughts, their love and hate and fear. Pictures, sounds, sensation. A child crying, a woman dangling from a rope, a trembling hand smeared with jism. The eternal refrain:

I Hate You.

I Hate You.

I Hate You.

Her soul sifted through humanity's collective unconscious faster then her mind could keep up. Her head hurt from all their thoughts screaming to the surface.

She was in agony.

She was in orgasm.

She was alone in the sea of humanity.

Where is everybody?

is everybody in?

Is Everybody In?

The ceremony is about to begin.

WAKE UP!

"They're here!"

"Rei."

"They're here!"

"**Rei.**"

Her eyes opened. Her commander called.

"Sir?" The lights in the dummy plug plant brightened at her motion, clearing her head of whatever had previously been there.

"You were screaming."

"My apologies, Commander Ikari."

"Why were you screaming, Rei?"

She thought about it a moment, trying to remember.

"I'm not sure Sir. I think we are under attack."

"That's enough for today, Rei. Clean up and report to the cages."

"Yes Sir."

Ikari left, his footsteps heavy against the esoteric etchings on the floor, the sound echoing off the glass walls of the dummy plant.

Rei initiated the disconnect sequence with her thoughts, causing the reddish orange LCL she was suspended in to drain through the grated floor of the tube, where it would be recycled. Above her the giant steel casing for the dummy uploader, began to rain down cold water at a healthy pressure. LCL was alkaline as blood was alkaline, and it felt sticky to her skin. She would not mind so much if she wasn't required to wear clothes, but as it was, when the tube finished the clean up cycle and retracted into the ceiling, she walked towards the only thing in the room, a cheap metal folding chair with a towel and her clothes on it. Drying and dressing herself, she left the room, not even sparing a glance at the pale smiling faces tracking her motion from behind the glass walls.


	2. Angel Attack! part 1

**NN**

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><p><strong>The Words of the Preacher:<br>**

_**"The things that have been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done, is that which shall be done; **_

_**There is No New Thing Under The Sun."**_

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><p>He saw her standing across the courtyard. A young girl, maybe 14 or 15, with skin so pale that she'd probably bleed blue if you cut her. He hadn't been in his home country since he was five or six, but he knew that direct eye contact with strangers was not causally done in japan, and her gaze was firmly fixed on him, albinic red eyes meeting deep blue for long seconds. He blinked and she was gone.<p>

"Professor?…"

"Yes, Shinji?"

He turned to look at Kozo, who was using his time on line to go through Shinji's housing forms and his own tenure paperwork.

"I just saw a girl."

"Yes." He didn't look up from his paperwork "They have those in Japanese Universities."

"N-No." he stammered. "She was staring right at me."

"That hasn't happened to me since my hair started receding."

"My point is, Doctor, she was albino, and had no protection from the sun."

"Albino?" The old man was suddenly interested, and looked up. "Where is she?"

"That's the strange part. She disappeared."

"Disappeared? What color was her hair?"

"White, I think. She-" Shinji forgot what he was going to say, distracted as he was by the air raid siren and the sudden tremors that knocked down everybody standing in the courtyard, sending him in particular crashing into a girl standing right behind him.

Their heads collided on the way down, and he exhaled sharply at the pain. He attempted to draw his head protectively between his knees, but tangled as their bodies were he only ended up pressing his face into her chest.

"GET OFF ME, CREEP!" Shinji wasn't thinking straight due to the pain, but he could tell she was tall for a woman in japan, perhaps due to her obviously European ancestry, and if he could go by the blows she was raining down on him, strong for one too.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Please stop."

"You're gonna be sorry, blockhead!"

He rolled away from her, and she took that opportunity to take the tactical high ground and stand up over him. She looked beautiful and terrible, a redheaded demon in a yellow sundress, long legs ready to inflict pain by stomping on poor stupid Shinji. She was about to snuff out his face with the heel of her fashionable but practical footwear when the old man saved his life.

"Miss Soryu?"

"That's Dr. Langley to you, old man."

"I'm Dr. Fuyutsuki, the new department head of Metaphysical Biology."

She paused, her leg raised in mid-air, as recognition dawned in her.

"Didn't you work with Gerhirn before it was reformed?"

"Yes. I was heavily involved with Project E before an accident occurred during a contact experiment with this young man's mother."

"Who…?"

"Shinji Ikari, the son of Yui and Gendo Ikari."

"What?" She was momentarily stunned at the fact she was beating the crap out of the Commander's son. She didn't even realize that she was giving him a clear view of her rather revealing undergarments.

"Red is definitely her color." He would not have uttered those words if not for the brain damage she had surely inflicted upon him.

She realized what he said, and the shock in her eyes was gone. She was once again an avenging angel, ready to pass judgment. He screwed his eyes tight, and it all returned to nothing.

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><p>N2<p>

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><p>Deep beneath Tokyo-3, Gendo Ikari sat atop the command tower, studying the gigantic holographic screen that took up the whole north wall of the CIC. The bridge crew scurried around like ants below him, prepping for the first Eva combat sortie in history.<p>

He was supposed to be part of a conference call between the UN, the JSDF, and the American Navy, but the conversation just seemed so petty. The JSDF was livid with the US Navy because they had fired upon The Enemy the second they had picked it up on Sonar, while it was in Japanese waters, before AT sensors had even confirmed it was blue blooded alien scum. They hadn't stopped when the JSDF complained, and were in fact still firing upon it, even as it came up from the depths.

The mere sight of it was overpowering: vaguely simian, vaguely amphibian, clearly ugly. It was massive in a way that none of God's creatures should be, washing away Japanese artillery pieces with all the water it displaced.

It had no head, and in place of a face it had a grotesque stone mask with dark eyes and a long beak, centered between it's shoulders. A large red orb sat below the mask in what would be it's solar plexus, the throne of it's soul.

It covered an enormous amount of ground with each titanic step and causally swatted away Japanese VTOLS and American drones like so many disease carrying flies. Any hope of subduing it was false.

Over the Phone, the JSDF was telling the Americans that they had things well in control now, and that they can leave their airspace at any time, thank you.

The Americans were asking the UN for permission to Nuke it.

Ikari knew that a nuclear weapon, or even a Non-Nuclear Rapture class warhead, could probably slow it down, but the only thing that could truly stand up to it was an Evangelion, and they were wasting their time trying to fight it with conventional weaponry.

The UN had finally been an adult and told the US Navy 'No, you cannot launch a Nuclear Weapon in a populated area in a sovereign nation, even if half our Air-Force and ⅔ our Naval Fleet is made up of hardware you loaned to us, because Japan is the one paying the bills these days anyways.'

There was several minutes of nationalistic posturing on all sides, but eventually they reached an agreement.

The compromise was that they, The Japanese, were going to use a Rapture class 'N2' explosive on it, in the form of a mine detonated at it's feet when it reached Mt. Takanosu, which would be any moment now.

Gendo took the opportunity to fiddle with his smartphone, checking on the location of the second child and Major Katsuragi. Rei could go out there alone if need be, but she lacked the combat skills and initiative of the strong willed second child, and Katsuragi was needed for her tactical expertise. Although Gendo was the Supreme Commander of Nerve, he had no illusions that he was a military man. He was a scientist and a bureaucrat, and although one day he would be much more, for now he needed the advice of military minds.

According to the GPS trackers in Katsuragi and Langly's phones, they had just met up at Tokyo-3 University. He remembered the hag had said something about Langley teaching a new course this semester and something about new faculty, but he could never quite manage to remember anything she said before she left his quarters at night, disgusted as he was by her badly concealed post-coital neediness and vulnerability.

The CIC was silent for a moment as a flash lit up the screen, and then the magnetic wave from N2 mine knocked sensors offline. Suddenly all the techs were talking at once, trying to get a read on the situation.

The hag encouraged Langley to act as a recruiter for Nerve's technical division, and he actually agreed with her. Nerve could use all the talent it could get, because as the central screen clearly showed as it blinked back to life, not even an N2 mine could kill The Enemy.

The conference call was silent as the Enemy withstood an attack that made Hiroshima look like a party-popper. When they gathered their wits they would issue him command authority, but why even wait for that.

Ikari pressed a button on his desk to activate the comms, and then rested his arms on his desk and interlaced his fingers to hide the small smile on his face.

"Rei." he said. "Launch."

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><p>NN<p>

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><p><strong>AN: I know, I know. It's not even a full chapter. I just wanted to get something out before Christmas, so that when I have my tonsils out the day after, I have some impetus to work while I'm recovering. Please leave your thoughts and point out any typos I've made. Hopefully this story will reach 25K+ words before it lands in the Eva graveyard.<strong>


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